LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Acts 9:26-31
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 21(22):26-28, 30-32
Second reading: 1 John 3:18-24
Gospel: John 15:1-8
Link to readings.
COMMENTARY
Today’s First Reading (Acts 9:26-31) takes us to the immediate aftermath of the conversion of St Paul. So fearsome had been his reputation as a persecutor of the Church that it took a long process of introduction from his respected mentor Barnabas before his vigour and enthusiasm, previously bent in a persecuting direction, could be accepted into the mission of the Church.
Acts makes a great deal of Paul’s conversion, providing three accounts of it (9:1-22; 22:3-21; 26:2-23). St. Luke’s aim in so doing seems to have been to highlight Paul as an example of the power of God’s grace. If grace could turn his life around so completely, then no opposition could stop the spread of the Gospel throughout the world. But it took a long time for the Church to cope with Paul—something that perhaps continues to this day.
GOD'S LOVE FOR US
Last week’s reading from 1 John dwelt upon God’s love for us. The extract that forms this week’s Second Reading, 3:18-24, insists that the love we have received from God must flow through us to become a truly active loving in our own lives. When our 'hearts’ (so, quite literally the NRSV; Jerusalem Bible renders the sense here better with 'conscience’) are disquieted for fear we have not fulfilled God’s commandments, we have only to look to see if we are fulfilling that of love, since that, along with faith ('belief in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ’), is the essence of all that God wants of us. (The thought is not far from that of the scene of the Great Judgment [Sheep and Goats]) in Matthew 25:31-46.) The passage ends most attractively with a recollection of the Johannine theme of divine indwelling: to live a life of active love is to be conscious, through the experience of the Spirit, that God has made a home within us and that we too are 'at home’ with God.
The Gospel takes us to one of the most celebrated sections of the Last Supper discourse in the Fourth Gospel, 15:1-8. The extended image of Christ as the “true vine” continues the theme of divine indwelling that we have already heard in the Second Reading. It has an Old Testament background in the sense of Israel as the “vine” God brought out of Egypt and “cultivated” in a new land:
“You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River” (Ps 80:8-11).
TRUE VINE
Now the People of God is being reconstituted on Christ as the “true vine,” with the disciples forming the branches that are to bear its “fruit.” “True” has here the Johannine sense of what is coming to be in the present, messianic age, of which the scriptural images (such as that of the vine) were simply foreshadowings.
And, just as God “cultivated” the vine that was Israel (Psalm 80), so Jesus pictures the Father as the “vinegrower” (so NRSV; the Jerusalem Bible’s “vinedresser” is more accurate to the activity in view).
The passage gives two allegorical descriptions, one after the other, of what is essentially the same pattern of vinedressing activity on the part of God: branches bearing no fruit are cut away; branches bearing fruit are “pruned” so that next season they may bear even more fruit. What makes a branch yield fruit is the vigor of its union with the vine. Hence the need for believers to maintain the closest possible union with Christ. The “fruit” that they will bear will be specifically the acts of love (see the First Reading) that are the extension in their own lives of the love they have received in Christ from God.
How are believers “pruned already” by Christ’s word (v 3)? No particular “word” is in view but rather the whole revelation of God that he has given, which has included “coming to the truth” about themselves, bringing the darkness of their lives before the healing and transforming light of God (see John 3:19-21; 4:23-24).
UNITED WITH CHRIST
Some hearers will probably fasten on the detail about the withered branches being collected and thrown on the fire and interpret it as a reference to Hell. It is not necessary to take the allegory so far in this direction; better to stay within the image, which simply wants to affirm the uselessness of such branches and hence the necessity of remaining united with Christ. Believers will be truly his disciples when their lives manifest the love displayed in his. This will be to the “glory” of the Father in the sense of revealing to the world that God is love.
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for almost forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels can be found at Pauline Books and Media